As part of the city of Atlanta’s inaugural Affordable Housing Week, planning department leaders offered a crash course on how to become a residential developer.

The vast majority of residential developments sprouting across Atlanta command rent prices out of reach for lower- and middle-income tenants, because affordable housing developments almost never deliver a return on investment as high as for market-rate options. What’s more, public incentives to build affordable units are scarce and funding sources few. 

To qualify for government and private funding for affordable housing, developers  must aim to rent some percentage of the units in a mixed-rate complex to households earning no more than 80% of the area median income (AMI), which for Atlanta is about $77,000 for four people. Housing for sale must include units affordable to first-time homebuyers earning no more than 120% of AMI, which is just under $116,000 for the same size family.

Compounding the fiscal challenges are the zoning and permitting hurdles every developer faces. Plus, “getting the community’s buy-in is crucial,” Inyo Cue, a project manager for Atlanta’s Department of City Planning said during the Feb. 15 seminar — and obtaining the public’s blessing can be especially difficult due to the stigma associated with the term “affordable housing.”

Each step of the multifarious development process can be snagged by bureaucratic red tape or disgruntled neighbors — folks who adhere to the NIMBYist (not in my backyard) philosophy that’s long stunted affordable housing development in Atlanta.

The city’s Affordable Housing Week event, called “So You Want to be an Affordable Housing Developer,” broke down the complex path from project idea to leasing out units into five (theoretically) navigable steps. It drew a couple dozen metro Atlantans, some touting development experience and others bringing only ambition, to City Hall. 

Faster…